1
Researched potential competitor apps and created a chart to show the pros and cons of each.
2
Drew sketches of prototype to visualize what elements I wanted to include in the app.
3
Created low-fidelity prototypes using Balsamiq as I learn what users like and what they don't. I had an interactive prototype set up using InVision and had users click through it and tell me what the pain points were.
InkTank
Overview:
InkTank is a project that was developed by Asif Kamal with the help of his mentor, James Pikover and Tutor Kim Atkinson. The goal was to create an app that allows people to rate tattoo artists, find reputable parlors nearby, and see previous tattoos done on other people by different artists.
Purpose and Context:
In today’s world every aspect of daily life is being intertwined with technology. From looking up restaurants and hotels through Yelp and Travelocity to ordering someone to pick you up via UBER, life is being conveniently centralized on the internet. Creating an app that makes finding trustworthy tattoo places easy seemed obvious an necessary.
Objective:
InkTank aims to capitalize on the untapped digital tattoo guide market. It also hopes to become the main avenue through which people find tattoo places. The problem was there was nothing on the market that categorized tattoo places and artists into a neat platform.
Approach:
I analyzed the usability testing results and comments from interviews to create a tattoo app that would become the place to go for tattoo parlor research. I used Balsamiq to produce a low-fidelity prototype and had people test it out to gather new data and improve the design using paper sketches and rapid prototyping because I wanted to know if I was going in the right direction. Surveys, interviews, usability testing, card sorting, A/B testing and preference testing were all used to hone into what design would best satisfy the users. This was all in the service of User-Centered Design. When reading through articles about typography, color and Gestalt Psychology I tailored the designs to be attractive, because I learned that people’s initial reaction is very important. Using Sketch, a clickable prototype was created on InVision, through several wireframe designs. The wireframes gave me time to revisit pain points quickly after testing, and since I was on a schedule this was very important.
Duration:
This whole process took 10 months. Before this, for about 3 months, I was just learning how to organize and draw wireframes, and make them clickable and viewable online. Then the brainstorming and addressing the problem I wanted to solve took 3 weeks. I then drew my first sketches after that. I tested it out on users and found some essential flaws. The testing and interviewing took 3 months. The research around tattoo apps took a month. Deciding on what design principles I would use took 2 months. Creating user flows and personas took a month. Then for 2 months I focused on low-fi and high-fi mockups.
Lesson Learned/Challenges:
At the start of building my app prototype I was getting through the initial phases of deciding what elements were needed in this new prototype, such as a function for artist search. I was able to finish this pretty quickly. It was the next step where I had to find people to test out my sketched prototype that took some time. Because I had graduated college and was working at hourly positions, everyone that I knew had moved on and I didn't have a social circle.
4
Using the answers I got from users during testing I divided up the answers among 4 groups: Positive quotes, Negative quotes, Observations, and Errors. It was easy to see the similarities among different user responses. This helped me focus on what were common problems as opposed to individual remarks.
I plan to network and volunteer at nonprofit and get in touch with my fellow UX designers and developers so that I have people who understand what I'm doing and are ready to help. This also is true for the interviewing and user testing that was conducted; I did not have people I could go to for help. Another issue was when I was creating wireframes, style guides, personas and competitive analyses my tutor had OK'ed my work but later my mentor who is in a higher position found many errors in my work, and so I had to spend considerable time rehashing what I had thought was complete. To avoid this I will in the future make sure to check with all tutors, mentors, colleagues, and leaders before finalizing anything.
Final Showcase:
The original objective was met but through rapid prototyping I focused on the important aspects like searching for nearby artists as these features would probably be the main attraction. I plan to flesh out some of the less essential (but still important) features like saving favorites or messaging artists because these features may entice users who aren’t ready to get tattooed but are like browsing.
5
From interviews I found out who my target population was. I created personas based on some of the answers. Then I created a user flow that shows potentially what a user would use the app for. Here the user goes through different possible situations like forgetting her password, and shows how each screen links up to another.
6
A sitemap was created for an even better understanding of how each screen links up to another. Here we can see how far down the hierarchy each option takes you. This process organized under what heading the different subheadings should go.
7
I learned to create a style guide since this is very important when working with others. This made me see my project in a broader context which drove me to use common icons and button colors found in most other apps.
8
Here are the final mockups. As you can see I've designed my project based on Android Material Icons, though if I ever decide to create a real app I would definitely design it for both Android and iOS. I'm very happy with how my prototype turned out; I really like the look and feel of it. It has the special functions which I originally set out to build for a tattoo app, like searching for nearby artists and reading reviews about the places people have gone to.